


Poison And Wine

by thatsmyhyde



Category: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-05
Updated: 2020-05-31
Packaged: 2020-11-24 00:55:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 18,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20898974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatsmyhyde/pseuds/thatsmyhyde
Summary: Chronological scenes of an unfolding tragedy - dangerously self-obsessed Dr. Henry Jekyll and his little counterpart Edward Hyde navigate their shared life together and can't keep their hands off of each other. It doesn't end well, but we all knew that already.





	1. Awakening

When Edward Hyde opens his eyes for the first time in a new corporeal form, Henry Jekyll is coming to in the back of the mind, as though waking from a coma. He looks out of shared eyes like peeking through a crack in wooden floorboards, following a ray of light to see what’s on the other side. Panic follows as he watches the new body lift up little hands into the line of sight, watches the sleeves of his own shirt slide down skinny wrists to pool in the crook of the lean, delicate arms. Held in the dark recesses of the conjoined consciousness, Jekyll is frozen in desperate shock. It was supposed to be a separation. Not this, not the animation of a new life, not this inversion of him on the inside, stripped of human form, the shadow alive and breathing on the outside, wearing a skin of its own.

Hyde struggles to his feet and Jekyll freezes, hearing his counterpart’s ragged first gasps of oxygen falling in sync with his own breath. A double heartbeat thrums at the base of his head, and he tries to make the distinction of where the sensation is located - was it his own head, or rather the phantom feeling of where his head would have been if he hadn’t been the one disincorporated, or was it Hyde’s head, or was it their head. It’s impossible to distinguish. There’s something else swirling through the body, overtaking everything, disorienting Jekyll’s frantic attempts at analytical thought: a rush like a powerful stimulant, rising like flames, lighting this fragmented nervous system on fire with pleasure. The body goes weak at the knees and Hyde stumbles to one side, grabbing onto the edge of Jekyll’s desk, letting his head loll back.

Inside, Jekyll is drowning in the same euphoria. The eyes roll back in the head and Jekyll’s vision blurs, a deluge of fragmented sensual images flooding the mind, ravenous lust and carnal fulfillment co-existing in the same moment.

Hyde laughs, high-pitched, exhilarated.

In the aftershock of the first rush, he lets go of the desk, staggering forward, only to fall down on his knees before the mirror, spidery little fingers splayed over the floor, the body still wracked with giddy laughter and these waves of unholy pleasure. Hyde looks up and the eyes fully focus again, at long last, on the reflection before them. Reeling and spinning in the darkness, the doctor leans towards the line of sight, and together, they behold the new form.

Henry Jekyll feels the ghost of his stomach dropping through the void.

A fallen angel stares back at him from the mirror. Thin little frame, wide-eyed, sharp delicate face framed by long hair, messy like a street boy beckoning from an alleyway, like a whore boy slipping into the night fresh from a brothel’s bedsheets. Jekyll feels a thrill of joy soar through his counterpart and the dirty little mouth in the reflection smiles, crooked front teeth nipping the lower lip. The face looks young, sinful-young, like it’s frozen somewhere on the sickening sweet edge of eighteen years old. The image of this body is a corrupted, defiled composite of ten thousand memories of fellow classmates from schoolboy days, sightings of young men walking the streets late at night looking like jewels in the gutters, nauseating thoughts of colleagues’ sons poised to enter university, floating through society events with a hint of forbidden flirtation in their dinner conversations.

_It’s so young_, Jekyll thinks, wildly. _Why does it look so young?_

Suddenly, the luminous gaze in the mirror seems to hone in, pupils contracting, eye contact established.

“You like ‘em young, you dirty old man,” hisses Hyde, and the smile spreads wider.


	2. The Pleasures Of Observation

The first few weeks after the dual awakening are a whirlwind of indulgence. Gathering stormclouds of guilt and shame, approaching though they may be on the distant horizon, remain in a formative state at the farthest edges of the mind, kept at bay by the dissociation of the hidden observer from the lithe little perpetrator. Edward Hyde makes his way to the bars and the houses of ill repute with a spring in his step, while Henry Jekyll hovers in the starlit night sky of the psyche and watches. Only watches, and nothing more, he tells himself, safe and secure and inculpable in the darkness.

During daylight hours, Jekyll ensures his counterpart has everything needed to facilitate the debauchery. Money, clothing his own size, a hidden place of his own near the haunting grounds - Henry Jekyll provides it all, unrestrained at least in this. Then, with the rush of ecstasy that becomes more familiar with each transformation, he falls back into the shadows every night to reap the fruits of what he’s sown.

Jekyll is no more than a blameless fly on the wall of the shared subconscious as Hyde drinks men twice his height under the table, splits the lip of one who looks at him funny with a sudden onslaught from a falsely delicate fist, and runs off to secret corners of the maze of London’s underground nightlife with all kinds of people. Eager whores from the brothels. Drunken couples looking for the spark of a little something new with wild eyes and a quick tongue. And men, men, men, an endless parade of men seeking an encounter with one of their own sex. There’s not a single night that Jekyll sees his little counterpart go unwanted. Without fail, Hyde lures in wandering eyes from all corners of the underworld, reeling in lover after lover with slender roving hands and that dirty little mouth.

_Oh, we love this, don’t we_, Hyde says in a sing-song voice inside the mind, as a young man with raven hair and rough stubble spread over his chiseled face pins him against the wall of the SoHo loft that Jekyll’s given him. _You love this._

_God, yes_, Jekyll replies, feeling on fire.

The exquisite pleasures of observation are twofold, as the state of disembodiment allows Jekyll co-existing benefits of a shared nervous system and an out-of-body experience at the same time. Floating invisible above the lurid misadventures of Hyde, the doctor both feels the same physical sensations as his counterpart _and_ gets to behold him as though he were himself one of the fellows brought home from the bars to ravage the little seducer.

_You’re looking at me like you could eat me up, Jekyll_, Hyde says, his lank hair falling into his eyes. High laughter follows his words and echoes around the mind’s interior as he’s thrown onto the already disheveled bed, lying sprawled on rumpled sheets like a waiting whore as the man from the bar strips himself of his shirt and looms over him.

_Nonsense_, Jekyll says, strained. He feels a moan rising in his throat as he watches the man straddle Hyde and lean over him, pressing kisses to the skinny little neck below, calloused masculine hands fumbling roughly with the buttons of Hyde’s shirt.

_I feel your heart racing_, Hyde croons, as his shirt is yanked away and thrown to the side. He reaches up and wraps his arms around his conquest’s broad shoulders, pulling closer, digging his fingernails into the man’s well-muscled back. _So alive compared to how it beat before I came along, isn’t it…and I’ll make it race ten times faster before the night is through. Watch this._

As if Henry Jekyll and his eager eyes need to be told to watch.


	3. A Feverish Body Heat

In the mornings, after the endless hours of sin under cover of darkness, Henry Jekyll washes his hands of it all, slipping back to a skin untouched by the perversion, with no one around him ever the wiser. Like a criminal who has gotten away with it all against the odds, he finds himself marveling at the miracle of his situation, the sick blessing of his own failure. His daytime hours are the same as they ever were. The same work and social obligations, lined up neatly in a row, documented and scheduled neatly on paper. The same life, made of fifty years' endless toil towards crafting an artifice of respectability and status, is preserved and waiting for him as soon as the sun rises and he takes his own form back again.

Although, as the first few weeks wear on, Jekyll realizes that the facade is only preserved for outside observers. His daily routines may be undisturbed, and his own hands may be clean of the filthy nighttime excursions, but his head is crowded with vivid memories of every incident, countless images that set the supposedly unblemished body on fire with lust, mixed with a near constant longing for those heavenly rushes of ecstasy and pleasure - so different from the dull static hum of his life previous to all this. Initially, he finds this phenomenon merely a stronger variety of something he's already used to, as the effects of self-denial have already tortured him for decades. He considers himself well-acquainted with the way thoughts of unholy desire multiply violently in the absence of fulfillment, and for years, he's splashed cold water on his face and shoved back against it all, stifling the distasteful fantasies with obsessive work. But this now is nothing like that. It's not only stronger, by leaps and bounds, but it's another beast entirely from anything Henry Jekyll has known before.

No matter how hard he tries to steel himself against thoughts of impurity, there is no longer any reliable distraction, not now that he's gotten taste after taste of it. The hunger has been awakened fully, like a ravenous animal brought out of a famine who, upon realizing there's finally food in front of it, proceeds to gorge itself. And unlike anything he's known before, it is not mere thoughts alone that whet this hunger during his daylight hours. It's also the presence of his little counterpart, the perpetrator of it all, who does not vanish when the sun comes up.

Instead, from the very moment of his awakening, Edward Hyde is always there with Henry Jekyll, and as time passes, Hyde's daytime presence becomes more and more definitive. At first, merely a voice at the back of the mind, the sound of the second heartbeat, a light sensation of a slender body pressed against Jekyll's back. Then the warmth comes, a feverish body heat, the further defined shape of limbs, the feeling of little arms wrapping around Jekyll's neck, delicate fingers that can hold onto his shirtsleeves and run themselves through his hair. Next, the flashes of the pale little face in reflective surfaces, startling Jekyll for the first time in the street in broad daylight, appearing in shop windows as he walks by. And then, by the start of the third week, the ability to exit the mind and hover, a full-bodied apparition, right in front of Jekyll.

Once this milestone is reached, what comes next is inevitable and impossible for Jekyll to resist, a new form of sin, unable to be denied once the opportunity presents itself.

When it first happens, Jekyll is seated at his desk, bent over a medical research paper, one of many necessary contributions towards satisfying the expectations of the life he's built. It's early afternoon, sunlight streaming through the windows, not yet near to the nightfall that both his counterpart and his own hot blood long for. He puts his fingers to his temples, rubbing in small circles, trying to soothe a burgeoning stress headache and ground himself at the same time, blinking until his eyes refocus on the work in front of him.  
  
_So boring_, Hyde whines, high-pitched and cloying, and steps out of the back of the mind, materializing on the other side of the desk. Slowly, he leans forward, resting skinny arms against the polished wooden surface. His head tilts to one side like a playful child, and his stare is so intent that Jekyll swears he can feel the gaze on his skin, raising his temperature further. _You don't even want to do this._  
  
"It has to be done," says Jekyll, attempting firmness.  
  
_You know what they say. All work and no play makes Henry a dull boy_, croons Hyde, shaking his tousled hair out of his eyes. _And we want to play. I can feel it, Jekyll. I know what you're thinking about. I know what you want._  
  
"We'll go out tonight, you know that." Jekyll tears his eyes away from Hyde and looks determinedly down at the paper on his desk. At his own mere mention of the night, a succession of the memories from nights previous slide to the forefront of his mind with renewed force. The pleasures, the ultimate fulfillment, and the sight of his little other, on his back like a whore for their endless lovers, pale face flushed and hair slick with sweat. Jekyll bites his lip, trying to quell the feeling rising in his body.  
  
_But what if I could touch you **now? **_says the little voice, tantalizing.  
  
Jekyll feels a chill run down the back of his neck. Although he's become all too familiar with the internal sensations of sharing the body and feeling the second presence always under his skin, he's never thought to wonder if the projected appearance of his other, floating outside of the confines of the mind like a hallucination, could be touched itself. He looks up, with chills still rippling down his spine, and sees Hyde, eyes alight, lips slightly parted as though in anticipation of what might come next, holding out a slender little hand towards him from across the desk.  
  
Henry Jekyll has never seen anything so irresistible in all his fifty years.  
  
And when he reaches out himself with his own trembling hand, he finds that against all reason, the little fingers and palm feel as solid as any being of flesh and blood, the skin soft and burning hot.  
  
The feeling is indescribable. The shared sensations loop in on each other, pulsating, so the single touch of two hands is felt over and over again, a perpetual loop of warmth. Jekyll can feel the moment his side of the mind gives in; upon the realization that this kind of touch is possible, he succumbs to desire, throwing any illusions of resistance into the ether. He reaches out and seizes Hyde, dragging him across the desk, heedless. The papers remain undisturbed, as though a mere ghost has passed through, but in Henry Jekyll's lap, held against his chest, the ghost is a full-bodied entity, hands cupping his face, setting him on fire.  
  
_I knew you wanted this_, Hyde murmurs breathlessly against Jekyll's neck, feeling his arousal compounding with his own. His little mouth nips at the side of Jekyll's throat in a kiss, eliciting an unrestrained moan from the doctor. _I knew it, you dirty old man. You want me, you want me - we want each other, you and I-_

Jekyll has never had a young man this close to him before, and his body, after decades spent longing to no avail, is weak for it. He feels his hips twitch upward involuntarily and his face burns even hotter with shame, but the lust coursing through his veins outweighs the horror at his own actions. The intensity of holding his counterpart like this is beyond compare. Overwhelming and all consuming, this touch like a hall of mirrors, repeating the same glory in infinite coursing waves.  
  
"Oh, God, let me kiss you," Jekyll cries out, almost in a sob.  
  
Hyde takes the invitation in an instant, leaning his head back, allowing Jekyll to close the space between their lips. The kiss that follows is open-mouthed, hungry, and vicious, a kind of passion that Jekyll has never imagined himself able to feel, something that surpasses his endless fantasies by leaps and bounds. When he pulls away, gasping for breath, and stares at the little face still held in his hands, the look in Hyde's luminous eyes is wild and untamed, reflecting Jekyll's lust back at him for his own viewing. His little hands begin to slide from Jekyll's shoulders down his sides, heading towards his hips.  
  
Jekyll's heart is pounding, racing at the knowledge that he has crossed a line that cannot be stepped back from. Unable to speak, he merely remains frozen where he is, still panting. Then one of the roving little hands slips between his legs, and his ragged breath catches in his chest.  
  
_Take me right here on your desk, Jekyll_, Hyde whispers, his eyes gleaming. _We want it so badly. And aren't we so lucky that I know just how you like it already, don't I._


	4. His Own Wandering Hands

Henry Jekyll is burning up in the afterglow of the first incident of intimacy, quivering with fresh sweat on his skin and residual mirrored ripples of pleasure radiating still from his head to his toes, when the tendrils of shame begin to curl around his chest. Within the next few minutes, the terrible heaviness of self-hatred follows, descending upon him with full force, feeling like an iron weight crushing his lungs. This has been waiting for him, kept at bay for weeks only by Jekyll's fragile excuses to himself that he has never done anything worse than simply bear witness to his counterpart's nightly affairs, but now the barricade has been lifted. His own body has been involved, tarnished by the depravity, and with no excuses left to hide behind, the anguished guilt rushes in at last. Unhindered and agonizing, it hits him hard enough to make his head spin.   
  
With nausea rising in his throat, Jekyll makes a hundred futile promises to himself, a thousand times over. There will never be a second time, never, not as long as he lives. He will confine himself again to the boundaries of simple observation - and that much is bad enough already, shame enough already to carry without having taken it any further. Outside of his voyeuristic nights, he will be firm and strict with himself, as self-denying as ever, and never again allow the sin to seep from the cover of darkness and pollute his daylight hours. He will never lay so much as a single fingertip on Edward Hyde again, he swears it with every fiber of intent he possesses, before the eyes of a God that he's certain has already abandoned the both of them.   
  
_You'll never lay a finger on me again, Jekyll? _whispers the little voice, high and soft and sickly-sweet. Hyde remains in his arms, looking up at him with wildfire eyes, a knowing smile playing around his mouth, the lips reddened from countless violent kisses. _Oh, I'd like to see you try._ The tousled head is laid against Jekyll's chest, slender arms wrapping their way around his neck, and Hyde lets out a satisfied little sigh, clearly unconcerned by Jekyll's current determination that they never lie together this way again.

_How can you keep yourself away from me now, after having been with me this way?_ murmurs Hyde, and sighs again, this time against the side of Jekyll's throat, sending a fresh chill through his body. _You'll want me again, and again, and again. And you'll have me again, and again, and again, won't you, Jekyll?_  
  
Jekyll, with his shame scalding his throat like bile, cannot bring himself to answer.   
  
The days that follow are nothing but a parade of his shattered promises, broken into a million shards and scattered over the floor. There is not a moment of rest from any of it. Henry Jekyll is either high on their shared pleasures or wracked with panic in the aftermath, trapped in the inescapable dance of swinging from one extreme to the other, suffocating ever further under his self-hatred each time he dares to once again lay a hand on Hyde's slender little frame. He finds himself going in circles. Mornings begin with firm resolve to live solely off of leftover secondhand thrills from the previous night, only to turn swiftly into blurs of countless hours lost to his own wandering hands and his counterpart's eager reciprocation.

Even when Jekyll manages, in increasingly rare bursts of self-control, to bite his lip and avert his eyes, it's no use. He can only force himself to refrain from initiation for so long before Edward Hyde takes matters into his own sick little hands, running his fingers through Jekyll's hair, sliding into his lap, whispering delicious filth into his ear until the doctor's meager willpower surrenders, leaving them to each other once more. And each time, lying amid the broken remnants of his resolve yet again, Jekyll feels weaker and more frantic, increasingly horrified to find his attempts at self-restraint no stronger than a china plate riddled with cracks, doomed to crumble into irreparable pieces.  
  
Rapidly, he loses count of his indiscretions with Hyde.   
  
The pain of his guilt becomes unbearable.

And like a wounded animal, inevitably, he begins to lash out.   
  
The two of them are in Jekyll's bedchambers during the dusky hours directly before nightfall, indulging themselves in a burgeoning habit of having their way with one another before Hyde is unleashed for the night, when Jekyll's composure fails him in this way for the very first time. The apparition, ever eager, is straddling him on the bed, rocking his hips against Jekyll before being pulled in for a ravenous kiss. Jekyll runs his greedy hands down the outline of Hyde's form, feeling his fingers dip over the ridges of the ribcage, the little body fever-hot as always under his touch.  
  
_You love this more than anything else, Jekyll. You love it best this way, just you and I_, says Hyde, his voice alive with delight as he breaks the kiss. Serpentine, he slips downward over Jekyll's chest, sliding his way to the doctor's hips, murmuring breathlessly as he goes. _I'm going to make us feel so good, aren't I. Oh, this is love, isn't it? Everything we do together every day, all of this?_   
  
He presses a kiss to Jekyll's inner thigh, slow and ardent.

_You love me, Henry, my Henry. Don't you?_  
  
Jekyll's hands, gripping at the bedsheets, clench.  
  
"God, yes, you know I do," he gasps, an admission.

As soon as the words escape his lips, Jekyll's ever-building horror at his own desire hardens in his chest, swelling to a sudden breaking point, twisting into a dreadful flash of hatred and disgust towards himself. Then, just as quickly, loath to find himself culpable, he redirects it outward. In a whirl of blind emotion, he reaches forward, roughly seizing Hyde by the shoulders, and sits upright, throwing the little wraith off of his body and over the side of the bed as though he were no more than a doll.   
  
Hyde hits the floor with a shrill cry, fingers splaying over the fine polished floorboards. Almost immediately, the misplaced anger clears from his sight; Jekyll becomes aware of a pain spreading sharply across his skin, as the resonating sting of the little body's collision with the floor is a sensation shared like any other. Hyde is staring up at him, his rumpled hair in his wide eyes. Wincing slightly, he shifts, curling into himself, and his undone shirt falls loosely to one side, exposing a sharp pale shoulder and the harsh line of a jutting collarbone. Jekyll feels stricken by how fragile his other looks, the skinny pale limbs like porcelain against the dark wood of the floor.   
  
"That - that serves you right, crawling all over me like that," stammers Jekyll, trying to be firm, even with his heart sinking in his chest.  
  
_Oh, it serves me right, does it?_ says Hyde in a low hiss, his lower lip trembling like a wounded child, eyes shining with a sudden influx of unshed tears. _And what do you get then, for wanting me?_   
  
"Whoever said I wanted you?" Jekyll hears his voice crack. The corners of his own eyes are stinging.  
  
_You say it yourself._ Hyde pushes himself to sit upright on the floor, his shoulders hunched protectively, as though expecting to be seized again. _You say it your damn self, and you know it. There hasn't been a day since we found out you could touch me that you haven't had your hands on me, you dirty old man-_  
  
"How can I help it when you tempt me!" Jekyll cries out, feeling his sanity draining out of his head. "You drive me mad! You know what you do to me!"

Hyde tosses his hair out of his eyes, and stands up, defiant, his luminous eyes flashing with an impetuous rage.  
  
_It takes two of us to do the things we do_, spits Hyde, the high little voice filled all at once with venom. 


	5. Our Little Lovers' Spats

When the dust of their first real dispute settles, and his little counterpart is left standing defiantly before him, visibly trembling with a wounded anger that he can feel in his own chest, Henry Jekyll wants nothing more than to undo what has been done. The burning flash of rage that moved his hands to throw Edward Hyde from his bed is gone, replaced with a sick swell of regret, pooling in the back of his throat like hot bile. In its wake, his momentary rush of false righteousness disappears, taking all illusions of self-assurance with it. Jekyll is left behind floundering in the aftermath of his own temper, his head spinning, revolving in self-destroying circles, like a snake swallowing its own tail. And oh, how he despises himself for it all. 

A fierce self-hatred for rejecting his other's advances and for the callous way the little body was tossed to the floor sheds its skin abruptly to become self-hatred for craving Hyde in the first place, only to change back again in the blink of an eye. White-hot disgust weaves its way in and out of swirls of panic, darting from one target to another like a little devil stabbing with a pitchfork at the heels of the condemned. First, it tears inward, taking aim at Jekyll's own lust, then it doubles back to affix the blame outward once more on Hyde, desperate to consider the little tempter at fault for sparking the all-consuming need in the first place, and then back again it swings, admonishing Jekyll for being ever unable to remain frigid. Underneath it all, straining every fiber of his being, swells the worst of it all: the fiery longing for pleasure and release, the terrible selfish desire screaming to be fulfilled, and shrieking in rage at the fact that now it will surely go denied, now that he's ruined everything. He feels utterly stricken by it all, cornered in his own mind by this newest brand of unbearable anguish, another battle spawned from the terrible war inside of his head every single day. 

Henry Jekyll is damned if he does, and damned if he doesn't. 

He feels the icy touch of panic seeping into his heart, like frost spreading over a windowpane.  
  
_Well_, says Hyde, equally cold.  
  
The little voice is aloof. Though surely he can feel it himself, Hyde makes no obvious acknowledgement of the violent storm of distress wreaking havoc in Jekyll's side of the mind. Instead, he turns his back on the doctor, gliding over to the window and hovering before it. Deliberately, he crosses his arms over his chest and shakes his hair out of his eyes with a brisk toss of the head.   
  
_It's night time, you know_, he says, in the same cold manner. _Let me out now. _  
  


Shaking with anxiety and a swiftly burgeoning offense taken to what he perceives as his other's disregard for his current emotional state, Jekyll rises from his bed to oblige the request. Despite the frantic twists and turns of his mind, he feels placated slightly, relieved at the thought that ultimately his ulterior needs won't go untended to. The secondary release of his usual observations of Hyde and whatever other men they'll meet in London's underground is still waiting for him in the night ahead.  
  
His little counterpart, however, has different intentions for the night ahead. Hyde takes his time dressing himself once given access to his form, preening in front of the mirror in Jekyll's study. He slips out of the house as silently and swiftly as always, his head held high, eyes as luminous as ever despite the tremendous tension hanging in the air. Normally, he speaks constantly within the mind as he goes about his nightly routines, but tonight, Jekyll hovers longingly in the darkness amidst a stark quietness, save for the high little background hum of his other's own internal train of thought. Once having arrived in SoHo, Hyde ignores his usual taverns and typical hunting grounds, and it's then that Jekyll fully realizes, with a burst of intensified frustration, that the euphoric initial rush that comes in the aftermath of transformation is the only pleasure he will be afforded on this night. Hyde makes no effort to seek out potential lovers, instead keeping himself shrouded in the shadows of alleyways, purposefully attracting no attention of any kind as he flits through the night, as unobtrusive as a little moth. When at last he approaches his own little flat, he does so unaccompanied by any guests, unlocking the door and entering the darkened residence without breaking his silence. 

Jekyll watches in abject exasperation as Hyde removes his hat and sets it down on a side table, beside a vase of wilted roses. With a distant expression on his face, Hyde runs a fingertip over one of the crumpled flowers, an almost imperceptible frown crossing his thin face as the dusty petals fall apart under the touch. Then he retrieves a bottle of liquor from one of his cabinets and crosses to the apartment's little window, throwing it open. The rooftop below is slanted, but not enough to prevent someone climbing out onto it; Hyde slides nimbly out over the windowsill and stands in the moonlight, leaning against the outer wall of the building. Still without a word, he opens the bottle, raising it to his lips, and drinks deeply.

Overcome by his frustration at being denied all the pleasures he's become accustomed to, Jekyll is unable to remain silent any longer.  
  
_What are you doing?_ he demands, bitterly. _I already know we're upset with each other. There's no need to make any further show of it by torturing me like this._  
  
A cold wind whips Hyde's hair back from his face. His gaze is raised to the sky, locked onto the full moon above.   
  
"Tell me what I'm doing that tortures you so, then," he says airily, pulling his cloak more tightly around his shoulders.   
  
_You know what you're doing._ Dis-incorporated though he may be at present, Jekyll can still feel his own urgent arousal burning him alive.

"What of it? I'm only standing here, aren't I. I'm taking in the night air. That shouldn't torture you, should it?" Hyde takes another long drink and sets the bottle down on the windowsill before slowly running a hand back through his hair. Then, with equal deliberation, he grazes his lower lip with his crooked front teeth and runs his hand down from his hair to his slender neck, down over his own chest, down to his thighs, only to merely remove his hand in favor of lifting the bottle again. "After all, you don't want anything to do with me or the things we do together tonight, do you?"  
  
Jekyll resumes his silence, loath to explicitly admit to his desires, especially not now, in the middle of a fight.

"So be it," declares Hyde, and takes a deep, shuddering breath.   
  
He tilts his head back, letting the moonlight bathe his face. A shiver runs through his body, making his narrow shoulders twitch slightly. Quite suddenly, with a great sinking feeling in what would have been his chest, Jekyll becomes aware of the sensation of tears tracing their way down his counterpart's hollow cheeks.   
  
The silence between them lasts for the rest of the night. 

By morning of the next day, back in his own awful skin and sitting half-dressed on the edge of his bed with his head in his hands, Henry Jekyll is physically aching, having become unused to lacking near perpetual indulgence in one form or another. His puffed-up irritation at not having his way weakens to an exhausted, sorrowful desperation.   
  
Even as his mood shifts, Hyde remains determinedly out of sight, refraining from his usual illusionary daytime appearances and lurking only within the shadows of the mind, merely a brooding and feverish little shadow withholding himself from Jekyll's vision.   
  
"Come here," says Jekyll finally, his voice low and resigned, his longing for his other too great for him to continue insist on not being the one to first attempt reconciliation.  
  
_Come here and what?_ says Hyde, who materializes in front of Jekyll in an instant, having at long last been addressed.  
  
"Just come here and sit with me, like we always do." 

_What, so you can hurl me to the floor again?_ Hyde's tone is biting, but he makes his way over to the bed and onto Jekyll's lap regardless, laying his head against the doctor's chest with an eagerness that contradicts the distaste in his words. His own longing for the tension between them to be resolved is clear, and Jekyll lets out an involuntary sigh of relief as Hyde settles earnestly against him, little arms reaching up to wrap themselves around his neck.  
  
"I hadn't any idea that it would hurt, you know," Jekyll says stiffly, after a moment of silence in which the two merely hold one another. "When you fell from the bed, that is. I didn't know it would hurt. I would have thought you'd pass right through the floorboards."

_Oh, because you didn't think it would hurt, you can just go and throw me around, then?_ Hyde looks up at him, a look of some hurt still evident in his wide eyes, with the air of a sulking child attempting to induce sympathy in an onlooker. Jekyll feels his heart clench in his chest.   
  
"Don't be angry with me anymore," he says hoarsely, his grip on Hyde tightening. "You know I can't bear it whenever anyone's angry with me."  
  
_I'll be any way I want with you._ Hyde reaches up and runs a little hand over the side of the face before him, his thumb lightly ghosting over the crows' feet at the corner of Jekyll's eye. _And you should let us be as we are, Jekyll. We want each other, we're made for each other, you and I, aren't we? Why shouldn't we be lovers, if we're made for each other.  
_  
Jekyll bows his head, feeling unable to look Hyde in the eye.  
  
_Go on, Jekyll_, whispers the little voice in his ear, soft and high, the blessing of a fallen angel. _We've been wanting it so badly, haven't we, all this time when we were so upset. We've waited long enough now. Let us be as we are._  
  
Within the next moment, Jekyll has Hyde underneath of him, straddling him on the bed, open-mouthed kisses following in quick succession, desperate and needy. The illusion of Hyde's clothes vanish under his fingertips, leaving the apparition bare, revealing the pale flesh. Jekyll runs his hands slowly down from the harsh lines of his other's collarbones, down to the narrow chest, ghosting his fingertips over every familiar rise and dip of the little ribcage, over the concave indent of the sunken abdomen, finally curving his hands around the jutting hipbones. Hyde lets out a little sigh and raises his hips slightly, pushing forward into Jekyll's grip.   
  


_Oh, I knew we wouldn't fight forever. I knew we'd be together as we should be before long_, Hyde says, his voice full of delight as he sinks back into the pillows, watching while Jekyll rises momentarily to strip himself of his own clothes.   
  
The frail little arms extend and Jekyll, having undressed, lets Hyde pull him back down. His breathing quickens, and he feels overcome by the illusion of skin against skin as he quickly moves the both of them into position. Hyde lets out a sharp little gasp, leaning his head back, and Jekyll presses a kiss to the side of the little neck, worshipful.   
  
_We've learned our lessons now. We can't keep away from each other, you and I. You shouldn't try again_, Hyde murmurs, when they're rocking against each other, his slender legs wrapped around Jekyll's waist, little fingernails digging into the skin of his back. _I'll be yours forever, and you'll be mine. We'll be each others, won't we. We belong to each other, you and I. We're going to be in love this way forever, Henry, my Henry. Aren't we. Forever just like this. _

During moments like these, awash in the crashing waves of mutual pleasure, forever both sounds plausible and feels already achieved. 

In truth, it takes only a spare week for the doctor's shame to overwhelm him again.  
  
After all, although seeming to recede briefly in moments of ecstasy, his pain is unrelenting; Henry Jekyll remains an animal with his foot in a steel trap, snarling whenever the mechanism clenches tighter. And this, alas, is the way things are fated to be, night to day, over and over, the fights becoming as much a part of the dance as anything else. 

The circumstances, for the most part, are always the same. First, a rush of adoration rising in his chest as he observes his counterpart, or a moment of urgent desire considered too strong, or a slip of the tongue leading to a revelation of his deepening attachment to his other - any of these have the potential to send Jekyll over the edge into a flighty and incandescent rage. Inevitably, in these moments of overwhelming emotion, he seeks to terminate the bond between himself and the little being always burning under his skin, angrily demanding a privacy impossible for Hyde to grant given their situation, snapping not to come near him, to leave him alone, lashing out with his arm and shoving the source of temptation away, crying out that he never wanted this, never wanted any of it. And each time, increasingly overwrought and uneducated in other manners of response, Edward Hyde seeks to pay back what he receives, in one way or another. 

Once, thrown into his own fury at another incident of personal attack, Hyde stamps a foot against the floor like a petulant child and screams wordlessly for hours, an ear-shattering and endless shriek that goes on and on until Jekyll can bear it no longer, his head throbbing and his own throat pained from his other's cries as the pair of them finally collapse into each other's arms on the floor beside his desk.

This, too, is simply the way that things become accustomed to going, the consistent result of every struggle between them. This constant, violent barreling towards the inevitable return to each other's embrace, clinging and passionate and clawing at one another's backs in the rush to make up for time lost to each altercation.  
  


The cycle, once begun, is a wheel unceasingly turning, for months on end.

Still, morning comes as always.  
  
Hyde creeps silently through the back entrance and into the house, only the lightest step of little feet audible against the floorboards. He skitters up to Jekyll's study and closes the door behind him, locks it against the possibility of prying eyes, and starts removing his clothes, throwing them carelessly to the side. Due to unusual circumstances, it's further along into the day than is usual for the daily switch to be performed. Hyde bows his head, hair falling into eyes narrowed against a golden stream of sunlight coming through the slight opening between the curtains drawn over the study's window, and slips backward into the safety of shadow before looking up again.  
  
"What a waste of half a night," Hyde says, reaching his arms over his head and stretching before letting his hands fall downward, slipping seductively over his own body. "We'll have to play together all day to make up for it, won't we."   
  
_Stop toying with me and get on with it_, Jekyll says, his nerves on edge. _We need to change over. It's horribly late. _  
  
Hyde laughs and twirls his way over to the desk, where the formula waits, already prepared.   
  
As soon as Jekyll is settled back into himself, dressed, and seated at his desk, Hyde appears in his lap, little mouth nuzzling at his neck.   
  
_I did well for us, didn't I, last night? I was just as smooth as I could have been, don't you think._ As always, the eager little arms wrap themselves around Jekyll's neck, the tousled head resting on his shoulder. _I think most anyone would have lost his head, being dragged in front of a mad mob of people like that, but not me. No, not me. And we are very pleased with me for it, aren't we. _  
  
"You could have looked where you were going," says Jekyll reproachfully, his brow furrowing.   
  
_Oh, could I, Jekyll? **You** didn't see her coming either. _

Jekyll opens his mouth to retort and finds a delicate little finger immediately laid across his lips.  
  
_Hush, you silly old man_, Hyde says, his eyes alight with mixed mischief and affection. _I don't want another of our little lovers' spats with my Henry right now. We'd much rather have a kiss today, wouldn't we._


	6. Part Of The Human Condition

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: some lines in this chapter have been quoted from the original book - see if you can spot them. 
> 
> Aaand this chapter marks the half-way point of this story! Thank you so much for reading so far, I can't wait to carry on to the bitter end. <3

By now, settled as he is in his unusual situation, Henry Jekyll has become irritably accustomed to many things he often feels he would rather go with out, and one of these is Edward Hyde's behavior in the presence of house guests. Time after time, both unwilling to be ignored and eager to take advantage of his veil of invisibility to everyone aside from Jekyll, the little apparition inserts himself into every social situation, and tonight's interaction is no different: Jekyll sits stiffly in front of his fireplace, hands gripping the arms of his chair, white-knuckled, and attempts to retain a casual air as his counterpart hovers over his visiting lawyer's head, earnestly stealing Jekyll's attention from the conversation at hand.  
  
The lawyer, Gabriel Utterson, his familiar blue eyes filled with visible worry and his unsullied mind entirely unaware of the second dialogue unfolding in the room, expresses some modicum of concern, some vaguely stern reproachfulness borne out of the deep care of a lifelong friend.   
  
Henry Jekyll, nervous and distracted by the lithe little airborne form, is barely conscious of both Utterson's remarks and his own responses.   
  
_Let us send him away_, says Hyde sulkily, with the air of a child bored to tears by the discussions of his elders. _Mr. Utterson has my poor old man upset, with all this unwanted talk, doesn't he. I can tell._ Slowly, he turns himself upside down and spins idly, his arms crossed over his chest.   
  
_He's my lawyer_, says Jekyll, sharp and irascible inside of his mind as he watches Hyde rotate above Utterson's head. _And one of my oldest friends besides. It's entirely expected for him to have his concerns, and I'll thank you to stop distracting me. Thanks to you, I'll now have to do my best to set everything in order with him - for my own sake and for yours. _

  
"Well, I must tell you," says Utterson, sounding somewhat regretful as he continues the conversation, "I have been learning something of young Hyde."   
  
At the mention of his name, Hyde turns himself right-side up and descends gracefully from his place above Utterson's head to hover at his side, little hands trailing along the lawyer's arm. _I have been learning something of you too, haven't I, and how you skulk about in alleyways_, says Hyde, touching an invisible fingertip to a button on sleeve of Utterson's jacket.  
  
"I do not care to hear anymore," says Jekyll, attempting to refocus his eyes on the lawyer. "I thought we'd agreed to drop the subject."  
  
Utterson, his brow furrowed in abject concern, persists regardless.   
  
"What I heard was abominable."   
  
Hyde hooks his crooked front teeth over his lower lip, barely holding back a fit of carefree giggles, and leans his head against the lawyer's shoulder. _Oh, was it, sir? How strange. What I heard on the subject was **divine.**_ Unseen, he slides into Utterson's lap, luminous eyes alight with mirth. _You should hear what the good doctor has to say on the matter. Such sighings of adoration, such endless moans of pleasure - I promise you there's no one of whom he has a more favorable opinion in all of London._  
  
With a little titter of laughter, Hyde runs a delicate hand down the lapel of Utterson's jacket. The lawyer shifts in his seat, and Jekyll tenses, quivering slightly with irrational fear that Utterson's movement could possibly indicate a sudden ability to sense the apparition's presence. At the same time, he finds himself stricken with embarassed discomfort at the shared sensation of Hyde's unperceived touches, experiencing in uncanny vividness the feeling of being seated himself upon his old friend's lap.   
  
"It makes no difference what you heard," Jekyll says, his voice sharper than intended due to the situation at hand. "You do not understand my position."   
  
“Then explain it to me, Harry, for heavens’ sake. I want nothing more than to understand.”  
  
“I’m afraid I can’t. It is one of those affairs that simply cannot be mended by talking.”   
  
“But you know me,” says Utterson, leaning forward. “You know you can trust me, don’t you? If you’ll only tell me what the circumstances are, I have no doubt I can get you out of it.”   
  
_Get him out of it?_ gasps Hyde, feigning shock at the offer with his little mouth dropped open wide. _Oh, but we don’t want to be gotten out of anything, you see. We won’t ever be parted from each other, not as long as we live, and we don’t wish to be._ He turns his head away from Utterson and looks at Jekyll, his eyes incandescent._ Isn’t that right, Jekyll. There’s nothing in the world that could take us from each other’s arms. _  
  
“Oh, that’s very good of you to say,” says Jekyll, fidgeting in further discomfort as Hyde vanishes from Utterson’s lap and reappears in Jekyll’s own, proceeding to his usual habit of nuzzling against Jekyll's neck. “I truly cannot find words to thank you, and believe me, I would trust you before any man alive - even before myself-” Jekyll pauses, letting out a weak laugh, his power of speech momentarily failing him as the little teeth nip the side of his throat. “But it’s - it’s nothing as bad as what you must be thinking, and just to put your heart at rest, I’ll tell you one thing. The moment I choose, I can be rid of Mr. Hyde.”  
  
_Oh, can you? Can you really?_ Hyde murmurs, reaching up a hand to caress the side of Jekyll’s face. _What a silly thing to say. You couldn’t bear it, having me gone. We couldn’t live a day without one another, we've learned that by now, haven't we._  
  
“I give you my word on that.” Jekyll’s voice is quivering, ever so slightly, an almost imperceptible tremor. “But now, if you please, I must tell you that this is a private matter, and I beg of you to let it sleep.”   
  
“I have no doubt you are perfectly right,” Utterson says, averting his eyes from Jekyll and looking vaguely pained. For a moment, the lawyer observes the fire in silence, his hands clasped in his lap. “Well, Harry, I think I shall be on my way, if that’s to be the end of it.”  
  
“Before you go,” says Jekyll quickly, “I should really like you to understand that regardless of anything, I admit I have a very great personal interest in poor Hyde. I know you’ve seen him, he told me so, and I fear he was rude-“  
  
_And he’s dreadfully sorry, Jekyll’s poor little one is, isn't he_, whispers Hyde in Jekyll's ear, and bows his head in mock contrition.  
  
“But I do sincerely take a great-“ Jekyll’s voice catches in his throat again, as Hyde slides a wandering hand down his abdomen and snickers at the clear effect of his touch. “-a very great interest in that young man, and if I'm ever taken away, Utterson, I want you to promise me that you will bear with him and get his rights for him. I think you would look after him for me, if you knew everything. It would be a weight off my mind if you would promise. And you know I always have so much on my mind. I can't bear another thing."  
  
At this request, Hyde lets out a shriek of laughter.   
  
_Oh! Is this to be my great protector?_ cries Hyde, again in a whirl of affected surprise. He rises up from Jekyll’s lap rapidly and returns to Utterson in a rush, flinging his little arms around the lawyer’s neck, like an overdramatic stage actor. _Oh, be sweet to me, whenever the impossible day should come that my Henry is gone from me, sir! I’ll faint in your arms like a pretty young thing should.  
_  
“I can’t pretend that I shall ever like him,” says Utterson, slowly, his eyes averted, seemingly unable to make eye contact.   
  
_Oh, what nonsense_, declares Hyde, admist another burst of high-pitched laughter._ You’d adore me, you'd go to pieces over me, if only you would ever really have the chance.   
_  
“I don’t ask for you to like him,” says Jekyll, and reaches out, laying a hand on Utterson’s arm in earnest supplication. At the touch, the lawyer finally meets his gaze, and freezes for a moment, wordless. “I only ask for you to help him for my sake, when I’m no longer here." Jekyll's voice is pleading.   
  
“Well.” Utterson sighs deeply, like a man with the weight of the world upon his shoulders. “I promise.”   
  
_What a pity the day will never come that you take me into your tender care, sir_, croons Jekyll's little other, still clinging unseen with his arms slung around the lawyer's shoulders, still in a tizzy of childish and careless amusement over the whole situation. _What a shame! That sounded as though you really meant it. _  
  
When Utterson departs, Hyde seems inclined to quickly disregard the whole business, swiftly reaching for Jekyll with eager arms and and offering an even more eager mouth up for the taking, blithely secure in a carefree and almost innocent belief that things would carry on as usual. As always, as weakened as ever and in a state of relief over the end of his conversation with the lawyer, Jekyll gives in, losing himself in the usual pleasures, but subsequently finds his own state of mind in stark contrast to his unbothered counterpart. The concept of Edward Hyde becoming fully known to one of his old friends is deeply unsettling, and Jekyll finds himself afterward recoiling with a thrill of new fear at the thought of his other no longer cloaked entirely in secrecy, no longer easily dismissed as someone not entirely real, but instead stabilizing ever further something far more horrifying: a person who could be known like anyone else. A real young man like any other, never again able to be comfortably perceived, when the forbidden affections swelled too strongly, as a mere parasitic form best suited for the entertainment of the host.  
  
It is shortly afterward, with his mind on high alert in the aftermath of Utterson's fresh awareness of his counterpart, that Henry Jekyll begins to notice new distinctions in the delineation of difference between himself and his little other. His new brand of fear is creeping, ever stronger by the day, along the back of his neck like a viper waiting to strike; with a growing sense of ominous discomfort, he senses a development of further consciousness in the counterpart, something he finds chillingly akin to the forming of one's personal identity during adolescence. And it begins, as everything always does, with little things, a parade of passing moments that set Jekyll's nerves on edge, tucked in between all of their usual passions and squabbles, the underlying bite of terror a little sharper each time.   
  
One afternoon, out walking past a storefront's window display, the apparition of Edward Hyde hovers eagerly against the glass and fixates upon a rich maroon fabric with a damask pattern, declaring in an eager cry, _Oh, that's my very **favorite** color there! You'll put money in my account for a vest made out of something like that, won't you, Jekyll? Don't we think the color would flatter me? I do. _  
  
_I suppose anything at all is flattering when a person looks as young as you do_, says Jekyll rather bitterly within the mind, and carries on down the street in acute awareness of the contrast between his own favorite blues and Hyde's choice of the storefront's offerings.   
  
Another day, in midmorning hours, while seated in Jekyll's lap as he sorts through a wreck of scattered scientific notations on his desk, Hyde soliloquizes for hours on a sudden interest in the decor of his own apartment in SoHo. With his little head rested against the doctor's shoulder and his hand tracing absently-mindedly up and down Jekyll's forearm, breaking the skin out in chills, he mumurs thoughtfully, _I should get new curtains, don't we think so. I don't have any really lovely ones like we have here. Mine are so plain in comparison, really, aren't they. And I should have carpets for the floors, they're so bare and cold as they are now. And some kind of painting for my sitting room wall, so that there's something to look at, and while I'm thinking of it, I need new flowers for that one little table, don't I. My roses are always wilting and going brown, and - oh!_ Hyde lifts his head abruptly and leans back to look up at Jekyll with the air of one who's just been seized by a grand idea. _I should really have a set of dishes and silverware! I've nothing for my dining room table but spare bottles of liquor. _  
  
"A set of dishes and silverware?" repeats Jekyll, his hand clenching involuntarily, slightly crumpling the papers in his hand. "Whatever for? We hardly expect anyone to sit down to dinner there."  
  
_Oh, but we could_, says Hyde at once, his countenance lighting up with an excited insistence._ I've made friends by now, haven't I?_ He lays a little hand on the side of Jekyll's face, staring up at him in earnest, eyes as luminous as ever. _And we will have everything I've asked for, won't we? My Henry never can quite say no._   
  
"Indeed, and always against my better judgement, if you must know," says Jekyll through his teeth, annoyed, and smooths out the creases in the papers still set before him.   
  
During a rainy afternoon, not long after, restless while Jekyll entertains a colleague in the parlor, the apparition hovers above a newspaper left upon a nearby end table, wide eyes affixed to an article regarding imports from India, and remarks under his breath to himself, _Wouldn't it be something, to see all of that someday? Imagine if I caught myself some maharaja, riding on a great big elephant. I suppose he'd like me just as well as all our silly boys in London, wouldn't he._ At the thought, Hyde releases a little chirp of laughter, tilting his head to the side.  
  
_Can't you see I'm trying to speak with a guest_, snaps Jekyll tersely within the mind, his nerves set on edge by this burgeoning dream of one day seeing the world, sparked all of a sudden within his counterpart's consciousness. _Leave the paper be and come have a seat and be quiet for me, won't you. And if you won't, then make yourself scarce._  
  
Still laughing under his breath, Hyde slowly spins his way across the room, passing right through Jekyll's colleague across from him, and slips into the doctor's lap. _No, shan't be quiet_, he whispers, grinning. _Your guest bores us. Let's imagine the maharaja, Jekyll. _  
  
Jekyll shifts uncomfortably in his seat, feeling the blood draining from his face.  
  
His colleague leans forward not a second later, asking whatever is the matter, and remarking that he looks as though he's seen a ghost.  
  
If only it was a ghost, a specter of indeterminate personhood, something that remained faded and relatively intangible and single-minded in its haunting. Instead, Henry Jekyll's apparition seems to increase in complexity by the day, and these moments of personal interest expressed begin to be accompanied by pangs of new feeling in the physical form, as though that too were becoming further defined in its capabilities for humanity. Pains spread in the joints and the jaw, dull aches streaking through the abdomen and up and down the spine, throbbing through the muscles of the neck and at the base of the head, as though the little body, crudely formed by an accident of chemicals, is ill-equipped to handle the individualized soul swelling inside of it. And the little sufferer, previously seemingly unaware of physical discomfort when out and about in his own skin, not only proceeds to notice the ailment acutely, but to seek to heal it.   
  
Looking thoughtful one day as Jekyll sits down for tea, Hyde slumps over the table at the doctor's side, his head rested on his crossed arms, and broaches the topic, in a plaintive tone.  
  
_Why is it that I hurt so much nowadays?_ he asks, and Jekyll bristles at the look of deepening concern spreading across the sharp little face._ I get such pains in me, when I'm out for the night. Haven't you felt it? You must feel it, Jekyll, we can both feel everything, can't we. Often it's not so bad, especially once I've had a drink or two, but sometimes it's wretched.   
_  
"I don't know what you expect me to do about it," says Jekyll, speaking accidentally aloud despite the chance that one of his household staff could enter the room, his tone instantly dismissive due to habitual refusal to engage in topics that discomfit him.   
  
In this matter, he finds his unease to be compounded in several areas. Inadequate, despite his education, in any measure of definitive scientific knowledge on the phenomenon of Hyde's physical form, he has no understanding of the pain nor how to resolve it. Seized by involuntary affection and an emotion he refuses to name, he feels a sinking distress in his chest at the undeniable knowledge of his little other's new physical distress, and realizes he had been living in a foolish delusion that perhaps Hyde, high on the rush of the formula that unleashed him, was unable to feel the pangs taking hold of the body. And subsequently, with rapid harshness against himself for his affections, he is determined to have nothing to do with the issue at hand.  
  
_My dearest one_, says Hyde, the high little voice mocking in his annoyance._ You are a doctor, are you not? I thought you might have a cure for me.  
_  
"Yes, well, I'm afraid there is no cure," says Jekyll briskly, and averts his eyes from his other to quite fixedly stir a third spoonful of sugar into his tea. "You see, my own dearest one, pain is simply part of the human condition. To suffer is to be human."  
  
Hyde looks pensive for a moment, resting his head against his arms again, and then perks back up, his eyes narrowing. _I never feel anything like it in your body, during the day._  
  
"There are all different sorts of pain," says Jekyll, raising his teacup to his lips and taking a sip. "You may rest assured I am equally in constant agony."   
  
_Oh_, says Hyde, with a sudden solemnity.   
  
Indeed, the agony of realization that Edward Hyde is his own person, more and more every day, a being that can no longer be denied, a sin that carries the full weight of the blame of man lying with another man, seems to Henry Jekyll to be the pinnacle of distress, the final circle of his own unusual hell.   
  
So it seems, at least, until the agony of jealousy becomes a pain even worse, as one in possession of a heart now unable to be considered anything but real flesh and blood, beating with the desires of an increasingly free-thinking soul, will find it only natural to guard it ever more violently.  
  
All of it comes to a head inevitably at last, as a night like any other falls and Henry Jekyll stands in his study, a flask of the familiar bubbling liquid prepared and ready. Hyde is quivering next to his elbow like an energetic child, his eyes alight with anticipation. Despite the unpleasant developments of the unexplained pains, Jekyll's counterpart remains ever eager for his scheduled chances at full existence, seeming to tremble each night with increasingly desperate excitement for his time in his own form. In a fit of hyperactivity, he disappears from Jekyll's side and reappears at the study's window, looking out into the night, his longing for what's to come next tangible on the air.   
  
_Oh, aren't we going to have such a good time tonight_, he says gleefully, and then, snickering to himself at the thought of some impending escapade, adds, _Did you know, Jekyll, that I think Oscar is falling in love with me. You just watch, we'll have him going mad tonight-  
_  
"Whom?" says Jekyll hoarsely, freezing suddenly with the flask in his hand.  
  
_Oscar_, says Hyde, gliding back towards Jekyll from the window. _You know Oscar, Jekyll, of course you do. Why, we see him twice a week at least. I think he's enamored with me. Haven't you seen the way he looks at me? We'll see him tonight, and then you'll remember. And you can pay attention to the look in his eyes. We'll decide then what we think his true feelings are, won't we. _  
  
"We'll do nothing of the sort," says Jekyll faintly, feeling all at once as though he's been doused with a bucket of ice water. "No, we won't see him tonight."  
  
_Why not?_ asks Hyde, clearly startled. _Why shouldn't we? You always like what we do with him, I know you do, he's got such a-_  
  
"I said we won't see him!" cries out Jekyll, in a swiftly growing panic. "We won't see him tonight, or any other night, or ever again, I dare say. I've had enough."   
  
_Had enough? What do you mean?_ says Hyde, his eyes widening.  
  
"I've had enough!" says Jekyll again, more loudly and more rapidly, feeling any semblance of composure slipping out of his grasp. "Enough of all of this - this unseemly behavior of yours, with all of these men, night after night, like a common whore. I won't have it anymore. I've had enough of it of all. You won't go out any longer -"  
  
_Won't go out any longer_, repeats Hyde, in horrified confusion. _What do you mean, I won't go out any longer? I have to go out. I have to. We were just about to go, and I have to go, I must go out. I can't stay locked up inside of your bloody head forever._ All of the youthful anticipation of the night ahead has gone swiftly out of the little voice, replaced by stark and violent horror, a shrill rising volume beginning to stab at the sides of Jekyll's skull. _You have to let me out, you have to, you can't keep me inside all the time, you can't, you can't-_

  
"I can, and I will!" screams Jekyll, driven to a frenzy, feeling his heart wrenched involuntarily by the sound of his counterpart's frantic cries. In a burst of blind emotion, he raises his arm and smashes the flask against the floor in a shattering deluge of glass fragments and noxious liquid.  
  
For a split second, Hyde is silent, staring in open-mouthed shock at the mess on the floor, his thin shoulders heaving with the arrival of a raw and wild sob. Then, with a terrible keening cry, he lunges at Jekyll, little hands striking against the doctor's chest, shrieking at the top of his lungs, _NO - NO, YOU CAN'T DO THIS TO ME - YOU CAN'T - YOU CAN'T - YOU CAN'T -_  
  
The impact of the towering waves of anguish from his other colliding with his own fervent distress is staggering, the psychological equivalent of being struck by a locomotive. Henry Jekyll feels faint, light-headed from emotional destruction, sicker than he's ever felt, to the point that a wild thought of his heart actually ceasing to beat crosses his fragmented mind. In a daze, with communal tears streaking their way unbidden down his own face, he captures the apparition's skinny forearms in his own terrible hands, sinking to the floor and pulling Hyde, kicking and screaming, down with him. And with the feeling of one in a nightmare, he holds his struggling other tightly against his chest, half-expecting his grip to become futile within seconds should Hyde choose, in utter outrage and grief at his lost freedom, to remove himself to the recesses of the mind.  
Instead, overcome and wailing, Hyde merely continues to struggle ineffectually in Jekyll's arms.  
  
_YOU CAN'T, YOU CAN'T- YOU CAN'T DO THIS TO ME, YOU CAN'T- _  
  
Jekyll's arm clenches over the little shoulders, and Hyde's screams dissolve into nothing more than impassioned cries, sounding like one entirely bereaved. _How could you_, he wails, and Jekyll feels the little racing heartbeat soaring faster even than his own._ How could you do this to me? Oh, I hate you tonight, I hate you for this-_ He wrenches himself against Jekyll's grasp with renewed fervor.  
  
Feeling shot through the heart by the declaration of hatred, Jekyll releases him. 

A moment of agony, a part of the human condition.  
  
Henry Jekyll is lying on the floor of his study amidst shattered glass, a puddle of the horrid green liquid soaking into one of his shirtsleeves, one hand on his chest, gasping for breath, crushed under his own horrible mind and his counterpart's own tortured betrayal. Beside him, with his back to Jekyll, Hyde curls into the fetal position, and carries on wailing, like a beaten child, high-pitched and blood-chilling, for what seems like hours. Then, at long last, the little hunched apparition rolls over, still sobbing, still shaking with fury and fear of a dismal future of entrapment, and presses against Jekyll's side, seeking comfort in his desolation from the only one available to give it. A little arm extends and lays itself across his chest, gripping the hand laid over Henry Jekyll's heart so hard that the doctor might have cried out if he were not currently rendered incapable of speech, still gasping for air.  
  
_Hold me then, you dirty old bastard_, spits Hyde, still weeping bitterly. _Oh, won't you just hold me then, if no one else ever will. _


	7. With All Our Days Of Anguish

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, everyone! I am so excited to officially bring this fic off of holiday hiatus. I hope everyone's holidays treated them well and I'm looking forward to what 2020 will bring - especially in creative ventures, and one of those for me will be finishing this story. SO WE'RE BACK NOW. <3

In the days that come after Henry Jekyll's decision to remove the ability of physical existence from his counterpart, a conflict like no other the two have ever weathered before erupts, swift and brutal. The mind and body of Edward Hyde, all ribs and rage and sharp stabbing sorrow, is a little battle-torn land held adjacent to a greater power, shrieking an incessant cry for the return of lost freedoms, refusing to remain unheard by the one who holds the key to its borders. The war that follows, sparked by the destruction of its liberties and the continuous withholding of its tenuous grasp on full humanity, is as violent and desperate as any attempt at revolution ever was; in his desperation, Jekyll's little other pelts him with frantic attacks, launched on all available fronts, relentless. 

First, Hyde removes himself to the back of the mind, denying the doctor any access to the presence of the tangible apparition, and spitefully floods the shared psyche with an unending deluge of lurid sexual images, the act equivalent to an arsonist dropping a match in a kerosene-soaked room. He leaves Henry Jekyll burning alive throughout all his daylight hours, remaining himself stoic and steadfast against the shared feelings of unfulfilled desire, holding fast to his rebellion even as mutual sanity crumbles around him. Hyde feels it all in equal measure, of course; the roaring demands of the sexual addiction cut off from its fix, the maddened horror of his other's half of the mind, the emotional upheaval at the removal of his affections, but he remains firm, lingering in the shadows somewhere at the back of the head, a defiant and darkened little mist. Only when night falls and the hour comes during which he's been accustomed to being released into his own skin does he rise to the surface and appear in front of Jekyll again, quickly fleeing to far corners of the room if ever the doctor tries in desperation to reach out and touch the little figure in front of him. Hyde refuses him even a spare brush of his fingertips against his flesh, letting himself float only out of the radius of Jekyll's grasp, and there he remains, screaming for hours on end, an earsplitting cry that seems to ricochet off the inside of Jekyll's skull, feeling as though it could crack bone itself. 

All of it is repeated, unceasingly, with no sign of surrender. Day after day, the same guns aimed, the same fires set and always burning, flames leaping higher with every passing hour. Night after night, the same endless heart-rending shrieking, as much a mourning wail as it is a battle cry, the volume so incredible that not even dosing himself with laudanum can afford Jekyll the ability of sleep. One agonized week seems equivalent to ten thousand years of torment. Jekyll fancies himself a dying man; his blood on fire and his head pounding, a new dagger driven through his heart every time the apparition of Hyde appears at night only to pull away just beyond his fingertips, even the smallest possibility of momentary relief torn away. And as always, when cornered by suffering, rather than admit his part in his own undoing, Henry Jekyll dissolves, recoiling from the grip of personal accountability, and instead lashes out in a burst of uncontrolled frustration.   
  
When Edward Hyde appears before him on the seventh day of anguish and opens his little mouth to raise yet another chorus of hellish cries, Henry Jekyll moves like a rabid dog suddenly lunging from where it once lay languishing in illness. The only clear thought in his exhausted fragmented mind is that he cannot bear it. He cannot bear another night of the screaming, he cannot bear another day of this wretched burning, he cannot bear to live another instant without the little counterpart returned to his arms, adoring and devoted as always, and he cannot bear himself for any of it, and-

Overcome, he slaps his little other across the face, open-handed, like a particularly nasty nursemaid striking a disobedient child. In the same moment, he feels the sting of pain burst across his own cheek, white-hot and damning. And in the very next instant, the apparition disappears, as though he’d struck Edward Hyde out of existence in one fell swoop.   
  
“Don’t you dare hide yourself away from me all night,” Jekyll cries out at once, staring down at his own wicked hand in horror, the panic instantly rising in his chest. He feels his racing heart sink within his chest, weighed down with the familiar horror of one perpetually coming to his shattered senses out of emotional whirlwinds only to find himself standing yet again in the wreckage of his own self-sabotage. Each night's screams may have been increasingly worse, but at least his little other was there, visible and not removed entirely from his sight, not merely lingering as a presence acutely felt but always just out of reach. “That was your own fault!" Jekyll adds, in utter distress, when no answer to his initial demand can be heard. "All your own doing! You drove me to it, with these endless hysterics!“

_All I do is cry for your mercy_, says the high little voice from very far back in his head, cold and broken. _You do whatever you please, as you choose. And we know it.   
_  
Henry Jekyll cannot speak, his tongue like lead in his mouth, the outline of the delicate little cheekbone still searing against the palm of his hand._  
_

Within their head, Edward Hyde is drawing further and further away from the light that indicates the very front of the consciousness, where whomever is disincorporated can hover and look out through the shared line of sight. He has never done it before, but it comes naturally now; this spontaneous escape from the agony of existence and the burning handprint on his cheek, this soft and grieving return to the soft cradle of the subconscious, deeper than the mere shadowed corners of the back of the mind. Like one falling backwards into a dark body of water, he spreads what would have been his arms, closes what would have been his eyes, and lets the mind swallow him, unafraid. He curls into himself and finds himself held, deep and upside down, like a return to the womb. The pain, the anger, the hurt held by him and Jekyll both, all of it softens, muffled and muted until the distant echo of their heartbeats is the only sensation that remains.   
  
Once settled, he stays where he is, a little spark of life preserved in an undefinable place between existence and total dissipation, floating in a blackness that wraps gentle arms around him and holds him in stasis. He knows nothing of the passage of time, the goings on of the world around the shared body in which he resides. Down here, in the unknown and unperceivable deepness, the mind works in different ways, efficient and rapid; it seizes upon intensified bursts of emotion and unpleasant memories, rapidly clothes them in protective layers of mist, and disperses them through the heavy blackness, like wrapping shattered glass in layers of newspaper, so it can’t cut anymore. And Edward Hyde sleeps - a true sleep, entirely unconscious for the first time since his creation, remaining unaware of how long, like something out of a fairy tale.   
  
When he wakes at last, it is to the sound of Jekyll’s voice breaking through the layers of darkness, shaking and plaintive, calling for him in the distance, as though from across oceans.   
  
Without a moment of hesitation, Hyde begins to lift himself, extending himself upward from the subconscious. The reaction is unthinking and visceral, the pull back to the sound of his other's voice as instinctual as the drive to claw back to the surface when one has been sitting at the bottom of a body of water for too long and has run out of air. As he rises, he finds the way back more difficult to navigate, like coming up a steep hill ridden with mudslides after a heavy rain; the mindscape is thickened and slick with rancid fear, mingling with a heavy haze of laudanum. Slowly, Hyde slips through the fog and emerges to the front of Jekyll’s vision, taking form as the exterior apparition, in the process of fervently attempting to wake and yet being simultaneously sent reeling slightly by the unexpected shared sensation of burgeoning sedation. Blinking, he becomes slowly aware of their surroundings, the power of full sight seeming to return to him in bits and pieces. The two of them are in Jekyll’s bedroom, in the dusk of late afternoon, surrounded by chaos - the bedsheets a tangled mess, a chair overturned, the pieces of a shattered dish left scattered over the floor, the nightstand scattered with papers and empty medicinal bottles, and the doctor himself, his hair an unkempt wreck, seated on the edge of his bed, his shoulders hunched and his head bowed.

_You called for me_, whispers Hyde, his voice soft and quivering.   
  
Jekyll looks up, staring at the little trembling apparition in front of him, merely holding out his hands in supplication, and although he can still feel the wound of betrayal and grief flayed wide within his other like a slash from a knife, his wordless plea does not go unanswered. Hyde comes to him, sinking into Jekyll's lap at once, laying his little hands on the doctor's chest, then resting his head against the shoulder, a flood of mutual relief washing over them like a cleansing rain of holy water. For a moment, they hold one another in silence, transfixed in the looping sensation of their own embrace, Jekyll's hand cradling the back of Hyde's head reverently in penitence for what was done before.  
  
_How long was I gone?_ asks Hyde.  
  
“Nine days,” says Jekyll hoarsely. “Don’t you ever do that to me again.”   
  
Hyde pulls back slightly, locking eyes with Jekyll, his voice suddenly quite firm despite the tremulous emotion held within it.  
  
_Don't you ever strike me again_, he says, his sharp little jaw tensed. _And let me out tonight, Jekyll. I have to go out._

"You shan't be going out," Jekyll begins wearily, his voice rapidly weakening. "You know that I've already decided-"  
  
_You can't just keep me locked up inside_, interrupts Hyde, his hands clenching against Jekyll's chest, luminous eyes flashing with resistance. _You can't, you can't do this forever-_

"I can and I must." Jekyll captures Hyde's hands in his own, running his thumb over the sharp little knuckles, feeling his own terrible perpetual longing swell in his chest. "I have to, I simply just- I-" 

His capacity for speech dissolves on his tongue like a bitter medicine, and he merely stares at Hyde, his own desperate gaze locked with the wide, defiant eyes as he reaches out and lays a shaking hand on the sharp, tear-stained little cheek before him. The rest of the sentence never passes his lips. Held inside as always are all of his terrible festering truths, his overwhelming panicked jealousy and his horrific adoration and his monstrous love, grown ravenous and twisted and violent, terrified of its own existence and yet screaming to be fulfilled. 

All of it, caught in Henry Jekyll's throat, unspoken.   
  
And none of it, absolutely none of it, unseen by the ever-present other who bears constant witness to the shared psyche.  
  
The apparition is frozen under the touch of Jekyll's hand. The eyes are filled still with the betrayal and outrage of entrapment, the indescribable grief of the loss of autonomy, the theft of humanity itself, all of it a burden hundreds of times larger than the little burst of life that bears it upon wisp-thin shoulders - but the edges of the lithe form begin to shimmer, soft and ethereal, even as a fresh stream of tears runs over the hollows of the narrow face.   
  
"I truly just-" stammers Henry Jekyll, trying again, and a failure as always.   
  
_I know_, whispers Edward Hyde, luminous and unlearned in the ways of any higher form of love than this broken adoration. 

The little head drops to the side, leaning into Jekyll's hand, and slowly presses a kiss to his palm, deliberate and painfully gentle. Jekyll feels the moisture of his counterpart's tears on his palm, his own eyes smarting at the corners. Hyde looks up, wraps his arms around Jekyll's neck, and pulls himself closer.

_I know_, he says again, in a murmur, the little mouth just inches from Jekyll's own. _We're in love, aren't we._ The shining eyes are unspeakable, earnest, the little shoulders quivering. _And all the rest, all of this pain we've had between us, it's just as you said, isn't it? The suffering is just part of the human condition, isn't it, my Henry? Isn't it, just as you said._

The tender closeness becomes too much.   
  
Henry Jekyll leans forward and kisses Edward Hyde, open-mouthed, at long last, as desperate as ever._  
_

More than two weeks starved of each other's mouths, they wrestle with each other for a span of minutes, hungry and ravenous and clutching at one another's hair, and remain tangled thus until the desire for more than the simple meeting of lips can no longer be abstained from. The slender arms tighten around Jekyll's neck as the illusion of clothing falls away from the glowing form, and the sweet little voice, though still trembling with residual sobs, begins crooning and crying out nonetheless, _Oh, take me to bed, won't you take me to bed, my love. It's been too long, I know how my dirty old man wants it, I can feel it, can't I._ And at long last, the surrender comes, the way all of their little wars end, in rocking back and forth on Jekyll's bed, in moans and sighs and blind exaltation, bloodstained anguish temporarily displaced by the paradise of mutual pleasure. 

Afterward, in the period of relative calm ushered in by the end of their longest and most violent dispute yet, Edward Hyde seems subdued, a deformed little songbird flitting in circles around a gilded cage. The apparition, no longer removed out of sight, is now perpetually present, and Jekyll observes him steeling himself and settling into this new stage of life with a sad determination, attempting to divert himself from unresolved sorrows and frustrations, clearly seeking an increase in mental stimulation to replace the lost nightly interactions with the world. In the mornings, he nuzzles Jekyll awake with a frantic eagerness, and immediately sets to amusing himself with little games of imagination, inventing little romances and playing them like stage productions in the center of the shared psyche, enticing Jekyll to join in. During the hours of the day when Jekyll is seated at his desk, engaged in one matter of work or another, Hyde insists that a book be left open for his own reading and sits in the doctor's lap, lightly nudging his arm whenever he's ready for the page to be turned, making his way with increasing speed through studies of human history and geography, through romance novels and penny dreadfuls alike. For spare hours, he lingers in front of the windows of Jekyll's home, peering out for a glimpse of the streets, softly chattering narrations of what he sees, inventing life stories for the passersby under his breath; whenever Jekyll does happen to make his way out into society, Hyde addresses everyone they come into contact with as though they can hear him, engaging in little unseen pantomimes of social interaction. And every day, along with all their habitual pastimes, Hyde suggests some new little occupation, the high voice earnest and convincing, with a vague undertone of hyperactive need - _oh what if we counted all the flowers in the house, I'll do it, oh could you show us a book with India in it, I keep thinking of it, oh could you get me a little songbook and I'd sing for you, my Henry, did you know I can, I **think** I can, just let me try. _

Through it all, Jekyll keeps a close and omnipresent eye on the state of his little hostage, his anxiety as fine-tuned as ever, feeling his senses heighten ever further to become more acutely aware of changes within his other's emotional balance. At the end of these relatively quiet days, Hyde curls against his side in bed, a wispy pale hand laid on Jekyll's cheek, and lulls the nervous doctor to sleep, seemingly at rest himself, but in spite of these nightly illusions of calm and the little one's naturally playful demeanor, Jekyll can both see and feel an undeniable if not subtle shift. In total captivity, Edward Hyde is wilting, like a cut flower in a vase.

But as always, when made uneasy by the effects of his own decisions, Henry Jekyll finds his ways to comfort himself, to justify. There are surely a thousand and one reasons why its better this way, he tells himself, and a thousand reasons more why it should remain so, his ultimatum unchanged. Quickly, he rifles through his catalog of explanations, discarding all of those that pertain to his own insecurities and his own culpability, refusing still to admit to overarching jealousy or terror of judgement for his part in the nightly liaisons. Jekyll is wild-eyed and wild-minded, looking for anything else, desperate to craft another way out. 

He finds a pair of Edward Hyde's shoes left behind in the corner of his study, and holding them in shaking hands, abruptly clenches his fingers around the little soles, barely the length of his hand, and bursts out aloud, "Don't you see how little you are? You should never have been left to the mercy of all those rough men you used to run around with. It's a miracle some madman didn't snatch you away forever, with you being as small as you are."   
  
_Though she be but little, she is fierce_, recites Hyde sullenly, watching as Jekyll places the shoes into a drawer of his desk, shutting it with a resounding thump. _That's from A Midsummer Night's Dream, you know. _

Jekyll sits down at his desk in silence, determined not to undo his self-convincing. 

Yes, he tells himself, over and over, it's safer this way. Yes, it's a noble sort of protective mechanism, merely a choice not to expose the delicate little form to the dangers of London's dark underbelly any longer. And besides, are they not made for each other and each other alone, in need of no other's influence in their lives, just as they whisper to each other in the wake of all the hours of passion spent between them, as Hyde himself murmurs so often into Jekyll's ear. And does it not say something quite clearly, how eagerly his other caresses the side of his face and moans in his arms, spreading slender thighs time after time, and throwing his little tousled head back in ecstasy until Jekyll finds it all too easy to simply believe that his counterpart is at peace with the life that has been decided upon for him. No matter that their fights are more frequent and remain more frantic now, instigated not only by Jekyll's own usual bouts of self-hating resistance to his own affections, but also by Edward Hyde's longing for freedom, which builds to explosions of wild frustration that come and go like little hurricanes, whirling their way across a darkened sky. It's no matter at all. How much could it matter when the horizon is always cleared within a few days, and they make up tenderly in the aftermath of every incident of passionate hostility, always adoring and limerent in each other's arms by the end of it. 

Jekyll wonders if perhaps this is the end result, finally achieved. If this will be the ultimate way in which he will live out the rest of his shared existence, if their cycle as it is now is simply how they will continue to endure, removed at least from the nightly escapades of sin, but tarnished still in each other's grasp, tearing occasionally at each other's throats, damned and beautiful in total secrecy.   
  
When the next form of suffering comes, it is out of both Henry Jekyll and his little other's control. 

It begins slowly, an odd tugging pain that comes at night and seeps its way into every muscle of the body, taking hold around the hours when habitual transformation would have once taken place. Like all the most insidious ailments of the human form, it seems nothing much at first - just a little pulling twinge throughout Jekyll's body, easy enough to ignore, barely reminiscent of a drunk leaning hopefully towards a bottle upon a shelf. But with each passing day that no transformation is afforded to the waiting cells of the body, the pain builds and the throes of longing increase, growing like a cancer, until the time comes that each evening sees Henry Jekyll thoroughly incapacitated and writhing on his bed, knocked off his feet like someone in the virulent grip of withdrawal from pure opium itself. And each time, his little ghostly counterpart, bent double himself with shared spasms, wraps aching arms around Jekyll's contorted shoulders and cries out for the obvious cure to their agonies. 

_Won't you just let me out, won't you? Please, that would make it stop, I know it_, wails Hyde one night, holding Jekyll's head to his chest, little fingers entangled in hair slick with sweat.   
  
"You know I can't do that," snarls Jekyll, feeling addled by the pain. 

His jaw clenched, he claws at his bedside table for the familiar bottle of laudanum and attempts to dose the pair of them into oblivion for the night. They lie back on the bed in a shattered haze of perspiration and residual anguish, Hyde's little hands running themselves over Jekyll's shoulders, up his stiffened neck, caressing his throbbing temples, trying to soothe the brutal sensation of need for the absent chemical components. It's no use. With each coming night, all efforts to medicate the ailment with other drugs become ultimately pointless; it's worsening, further and further upon every fall of darkness, extending itself longer each time, until Jekyll is left in total panic, completely unable to tolerate the pain.   
  
What night is it, how long has this gone on for, he loses track of it all. He is gasping for breath on the floor of his bedroom with Hyde beside him, clutching his head in his hands, his breathing erratic, frantic over what seems to be the inevitable.   
  
Henry Jekyll knows the truth, of course, that there's only one way to stop it. 

As soon as Jekyll thinks it, Hyde clutches at him with renewed fervor, violently shaking little hands clinging as though for dear life itself. In an instant, the apparition seizes upon the perceived moment of weakness and shrieks at the top of his lungs, _LET ME OUT, LET ME OUT - MAKE IT STOP, LET ME OUT - _

"I won't!" Jekyll cries out, shrill and maddened. With a flash of stubborn anger searing its way through his head, he tries to tear himself away from Hyde, but just as quickly his momentary ire is replaced by another throe of agonized longing that leaves him helpless in his other's arms.

The wide eyes looking down at him seem to contract suddenly, as though stricken with a thought. Hyde's fingers stiffen, and then begin to frantically stroke the back of Jekyll's head, one shaking arm locked around his shoulders. The apparition begins to rock slightly back and forth, and the little voice, still panicked and shaking and raw, suddenly is forced to soften, dripping with honey.   
  
_I've had an idea, my Henry, my love, _gasps Hyde, still rocking the pair of them to and fro on the floor._ I don't like to see us in pain, I don't - and I know you're always in such pain, especially with all our days of anguish - but I've had an idea, my love. I've just had such an idea of how you could rest-_  
  
"No," moans Jekyll, his voice breaking, all too aware of both what's about to be suggested and his own terrible weakness in the face of its temptation.  
  
_I know a way to rest in our mind, I do. A beautiful way of rest. And I can teach you, I can teach you how to sleep the way I did that time I was gone away for nine days. You could lie there, safe and at peace, and have a sleep like you've never had, my love. You wouldn't feel anything, no pain, none at all-   
  
_"I- I cannot-"  
  
_I'd carry it for you, my love. I'd carry all of the pain for us, for just a little while. You could rest and I could stretch my legs, just a bit. You wouldn't have to see anything, or think of anything. And then afterwards, I'd wake you up again, and we'd feel so much better, I know we would. _  
  
Jekyll is shaking his head, wordless, but leans forward into his counterpart's embrace, worn down too far to fight it. Hyde keeps rocking, his hand still soothing and gentle over Jekyll's hair, bending over him like a little angel of death.   
  
_Please_, whispers Hyde, his head inclined. He presses a kiss to Jekyll's damp forehead, as light and alluring as a spring zephyr. _Please, my love, my Henry. Let me give my poor old man some rest._

Jekyll's hands clench, his last sliver of residual resistance. 

Within the next hour, the ecstasy and heavenly relief of the transformation that follows is unmatched by any that have ever preceded it. 


	8. This, Then, Is Triumph

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PLEASE READ:
> 
> This chapter carries with it several very important TRIGGER WARNINGS: sexual harassment (explicit language), attempted sexual assault, and physical assault, followed by the much-deserved graphic murder of the perpetrator. Please tread with caution and use your own discretion when reading, and stay safe!
> 
> This chapter has been very important to me as a survivor of rape, and I thank everyone for your support on my journey of writing this very cathartic fic. We survivors, no matter how small we may feel at times, have true power and strength. I love and admire every single one of us.

Amid the final throes of transformation, Edward Hyde lies quivering against the cold floorboards of Jekyll’s study, the taste of the chemical formula still burning in his mouth. The delicate structure of the small skeleton and still-weaving musculature seizes, wracked all at once with both residual pain and the familiar burgeoning swell of pleasure, slender hands clenching involuntarily and drawing in towards the bony chest; Hyde is unable at first to do anything other than simply curl convulsively into himself as the little body solidifies, the doctor’s clothes pooling around the slender frame. When at long last all is finished and he rises to his feet, weak at the knees and light-headed, the first action he takes is to lift his shaking arms and wrap them around himself, gripping his own sharp shoulders, as though welcoming himself home into the skin he has not been permitted to wear for nigh on two months. Then comes a sharp gasp for air, his head tilted backward like one surfacing from deep underwater, thrilled by the mere feeling of breath. And finally, with his arms still locked around his own trembling form, Edward Hyde speaks aloud and addresses Jekyll in the shared mindscape, quickly keeping to the promise of instruction as to a new form of relief from the agonies of existence.

"My love," says Hyde, as soft and lilting as ever. He feels the sting of sudden tears in the corners of his eyes, welling in response to the privilege of audible speech returned to him, to the sound of his own voice communicated not merely within the walls of a mind but set free out loud, where anyone could hear it. "My own sweet Henry, let me tell you what to do. It's very simple. You need only to lean backwards from the front of our sight, my love, and you will fall very gently into a soft darkness, where there isn’t any pain, nor any suffering. Only a very quiet place, where my poor darling can rest."

Disincorporated and floating within the mind, Henry Jekyll takes one metaphorical step backwards and freezes, suspended in place, fear of the unknown within the darkness of his own head momentarily paralyzing him. With the sudden fear, as usual, comes a swift refuge taken in irritation and admonishment. Jekyll leans forward to the front of the mind again, his presence in the ether swelling with a flash of possessive indignance.

_ I do think it necessary that first we should take a moment to discuss what activities you shall be filling your time with tonight_, declares Jekyll, his voice growing shrill with nerves. _ You won't see any men, not tonight. Not while I sleep. You may have something to drink and breathe in the night air, and see that your own little flat is still in order. And that will be all. _

"Yes, my love," whispers the little voice in return, earnest and shaky. Hyde is still shivering with his arms around himself in the middle of the study, knees trembling under the hem of Jekyll’s shirt. "Of course."

Even having received such reassurance, Jekyll remains at the front of the mind, tremulous and silent. 

"Lean back, my love," Hyde urges gently, in the alluring tone of someone calling a lover to come to bed. "You're so tired, aren't you. We know you are, don’t we. And doesn't my poor old man carry so much pain, hasn’t my Henry suffered enough for all these terrible days?"

_ How will I wake again? _ Jekyll says, still lingering, feeling weak with fear. On the outside, in the physical realm, Hyde’s body shudders, drenched in Jekyll’s anxiety.

"I'll wake you, of course, won't I,” says Hyde soothingly, squeezing his own shoulders tighter. “I’ll wake my love just as soon as it's morning, and we'll change over just as we always do and then I'll be in your arms all day, won’t I? We'll be in each other's arms all day just as we always have been, as we always should be, I promise. And you'll feel ever so much better, my darling, you will, I know it. Let me give my poor old man some rest now, while I go out in the night air. I'll speak to you the whole way backwards, until you're held in the safe place - it'll be just the same as we speak to each other to lull us to sleep every night. Lean back, my Henry, and I'll take care of us, won't I, just as I always do. And don’t I always make us feel so good..."

Edward Hyde feels Henry Jekyll slipping away slowly, digging in what would have been his heels at first, until he falls deeper and the numbness of the void overtakes his nerves, the subconscious opening itself to cradle him within. Hyde continues to whisper aloud, repeating reassurances like a spoken lullaby, growing slowly farther and farther away. The last thing Jekyll hears before the darkness of his own mind envelopes him completely is his little counterpart's voice, a calming sing-song, indeed just the same as any other night. 

Once he's certain that Jekyll is cradled safely within the subconscious, Hyde wastes no time in dressing himself for the night ahead, acutely aware of just how fast his hours of freedom will undoubtedly slip away from him. In a rush, he darts towards a darkened corner of the study, luminous eyes locking instantly onto a small pile of his own clothes left crumpled and pushed aside from his last night of freedom. A rush of happiness rises in the little chest: how many hours of how many days now had he looked longingly towards these clothes, and how many times had he paused to run incorporeal hands over the brim of the hat, kept locked away from any use of them until tonight. With still trembling hands, he strips himself of Jekyll’s shirt and vest, leaving them thrown over the doctor’s chair, and at long last dons his own clothing again, an exhilarated smile splitting the narrow little face as he does up the buttons of his vest and settles his cloak around his shoulders. Lastly, he rescues the old pair of his shoes from the drawer of the desk, where Jekyll had shut them up weeks ago, and slips out from the study like a little wraith, picking up a cane left leaning by the door frame as he passes over the threshold.

It is with a pounding heart and bright eyes that Hyde exits Henry Jekyll’s home through the usual back door and stands once more on the streets of London, reveling in the feeling of cold night air nipping at his face. For a brief few seconds, he remains still, soaking in the sensation, looking up towards the expanse of foggy sky and the glow of the street lamps above, his wide eyes filled with something akin to reverence. And then, just as fast, he darts off, heading back at last to his usual haunting grounds. 

Instinctively, he begins to talk within the mind as he swiftly makes his way through the shadows, remarking on the bracing coldness of the night and his own thankfulness for this burst of freedom, and subsequently wilts slightly upon receiving only silence in return, unused to this illusion of solitude. Edward Hyde has never spent a night out like this before, without Henry Jekyll’s voice in his ear, every moment engaged in constant conversation. The quiet vacancy left behind inside the mindscape feels odd and blank, empty and eerie all at once. Hyde slows to a walk and turns down a side street, his brow furrowing, eyes downcast towards the cobblestones under his feet. Up ahead looms the shadowed figure of an unknown gentleman, no doubt out looking for his own late-night mischief, but Hyde pays the approaching individual no mind, thoroughly distracted by the weight of the unfamiliar silence in his head.

“We don’t like it, no,” he mutters to himself, somewhat involuntarily, under his breath. “And won’t we be glad when I wake my silly old man in the morning-“ 

The gentleman, having proceeded down the street with long and unbothered strides, lets out a low murmuring sound of lustful appreciation and slows to a halt as he passes next to Hyde.

“Well, well, well - look at what we have here! Good evening to _ you_, Miss Molly!”

Hyde blinks and looks up, startled. 

The gentleman, leering, tips his hat and bows, a lecherous mockery of politeness. He’s tall and white-haired, his face deeply lined, his hands dappled with age spots - much older than any of Hyde’s usual nightly lovers, older even by at least twenty years than Hyde’s own poor old Henry Jekyll. 

“Pray tell,” he says, a slick smile stretching its way across thin lips. “Whatever is such a pretty little thing doing out here all alone?”

Hyde recoils at once from the unsolicited greeting, the gentleman’s advanced age and bold manner rendering him strongly and instantly uninterested. There is something unsettling glimmering within the aged eyes, like the sheen on the skin of a snake rippling through tall grass, and something yet more eerie about the particular mention of his being all alone that sends a shiver of revulsion down the back of his neck. Hyde turns his head pointedly to the side, looking away with a spirited and clearly displeased toss of his hair as he quickens his pace again, but not a moment later he finds himself stopped short, the gentleman abruptly sidestepping to stand directly in front of him.

“Such a lovely little child shouldn’t be so rude as to not answer a question asked of him,” says the gentleman smoothly, the same licentious smile still spread across his face.

Hyde, standing as still as a little faun caught in the sight of a huntsman’s rifle, lowers his gaze, staring quite determinedly off to one side, towards the street gutter.

“Look at me when I speak to you, boy.” A hint of aggressive insistence begins to sour the even tone of the gentleman's voice.

Slowly, Hyde lifts his head, looking up with defiant, burning eyes. In the past, here and there amid small skirmishes in London’s underworld, he’s found his stare alone can be enough to repel those he doesn’t wish to engage with, but the tall figure looming over him remains unaffected, staring boldly back. Seized with ever increasing discomfort, Hyde’s small hands begin to fiddle with Jekyll’s cane, a subtle nervous gesture.

“Now, tell me,” says the gentleman, carrying on despite the stark lack of response from Hyde, “how is this any way to behave? Parading yourself around at this hour of the night to catch the eye of a passing gentleman, only to playact at being shy when he gives you his attention? Other men might stand for such games, but I’m afraid I myself won’t allow it, not from such a little tramp.”

Again, Hyde offers him nothing but silence, lowering his eyes again. His hands twist more rapidly around the cane, white-knuckled, a horrible feeling of nauseated unease swelling in his abdomen and rising in his throat. 

“Come now, don’t be foolish,” the gentleman says, taking several very deliberate steps closer, and a chill ripples down the back of Hyde’s neck. He can hear a sick merriment in this declaration; lurking like a festering infection underneath of the gentlemen’s irritated impatience with the unbroken silence, there lies a tangible enjoyment of his target’s resistance. “I know just what to do with boys like you. A firm hand and a good fucking are what an insolent slut like yourself needs. And no matter if poor Miss Molly insists on pretending he’s too demure to speak! I'll have my own use for that pretty mouth of yours, not to mention that little-"

“Damn it all, leave me alone!” shrieks Hyde suddenly, at the top of his lungs, feeling like a thread stretched taut to the point of snapping. "And don't you dare come near me! I've got a rich doctor in town looking after me - if you lay a finger on me, he'll ruin you, you dirty old bastard-" 

For a split second, the gentleman falters and steps backward, taken by surprise at the outburst, but just as quickly, he seems to loom forward again, his face twisted with the ugly shock and subsequent rage of one whose victims in life have never before resisted.

“Naughty, naughty,” spits the gentleman, mocking, all pretense of politeness gone, and reaches out a hand.

Edward Hyde feels his breath catch in his throat.

His fingers clench. 

He feels the cold wood of the cane against his palm.

He swings it without thinking, his mind and body drowned in fear.

And then all at once, the old man is screaming, and cursing, and with his great height bent in two he falls to the ground, screaming again, the sound wet and raw. Edward Hyde lifts the cane and strikes three times, four times, five, until he hears the bridge of a nose shatter with a crunch, until he feels warm blood spatter suddenly against his hands, until he’s sure that the old man must be incapacitated. 

In a frantic haze, gasping for air, he turns on his heel, intending to run while his attacker is down, but a wizened hand grabs for his ankle, tripping him. In the next instant, Hyde crashes to the ground, the little ribcage like bird bones colliding with the cobblestone pavement, breath knocked from his lungs. His hat flies off his head, rolling towards the gutter; the cane, likewise, falls from his hand and rolls away beside him, only just out of reach as the old gentleman, wheezing, drags him backward by the ankle, seizing him from behind. Hyde feels fingers rake their way down the small of his back and he rolls over, kicking wildly, throwing his head back in panicked supplication and extending a bloodied white little hand to the rundown buildings lining the street, a ragged screech ripping free from bruised lungs. The scream vanishes into the night sky above, as though absorbed by the impassive swaths of smog hanging in curtains amid the night sky. The surrounding houses remain darkened, no candles lit, no windows thrown open to investigate the sound. 

"You - wretched little - whore- " The old man's voice is broken, bubbling with blood, hands clawing at his little target, seizing fistfuls of the cloak, rough enough to tear the hem. “Look what you did to me - look what you did-”

Hyde screeches again, wide eyes wild with terror, and then in blind panic, cries out in utter desperation, wailing, "HENRY! HENRY-"

"Little slut - I'll kill you -" A hand reaches up and fumbles roughly at Hyde’s inner thigh, hard enough to bruise, pulling at his trousers. "I'll kill you, I will-"

"_HENRY- _"

Within the deep darkness of the subconscious, the echoes of his counterpart's shrieks reach Henry Jekyll's disembodied ears. 

Suddenly, he finds himself rising within the mind, torn from the subconscious, as though someone has thrown a bucket of cold water over him; he is violently awake, traveling upwards, as though drawn by force of necessity. All at once, he feels every cell in the body pounding with fear - all at once, he finds himself thrust through a mindscape flooded with anguished adrenaline and the primal horror of violation - all at once, he hurtles towards the forefront of the mind, the shared line of sight leaping into stark focus, and-

"I'LL KILL YOU AFTER I’VE HAD MY WAY WITH YOU!" bellows the old man, enraged with pain, spittle at the corners of his bloodied and broken mouth, like a mad dog. 

_ No _ , gasps Jekyll, the shared knowledge of what's about to happen rushing in, feeling Hyde's form prone on the ground, the unknown assailant crawling over him. _ No - NO - _

Hyde kicks again, his little foot colliding with the old man’s jaw, and lunges to the side, extending his arm. His fingers brush the polished wood of the cane and he seizes it with a shriek, swinging it over and down. It collides with the old man's shoulder, a glancing blow, more of a momentary stunner than anything else, but the old man lets go with a fresh cry, and draws back. And in the instant that the craggy grasping hands loosen upon him, Hyde scrambles from their grip, rocketing to his feet, and lunging forward, brings the cane down again, still shrieking. This time he does not relent, the memory of those wretched hands still alive and determined to wrap steely fingers around his ankle burning fresh in his mind. The path of the old fingers raking down his back and their subsequent grip on his thigh are searing, feeling on fire, though coals had been raked over his skin. 

"I'LL KILL _ YOU _, I'LL KILL YOU-" Hyde bursts out, and finds himself weeping wildly, tears coursing down his hollow face. 

The old man spasms underneath of the cane and Hyde lets out a wordless scream of terror. He feels bone give way under the metal handle, blood spurting high enough to streak across his face, hot and thick. Jekyll is shrieking in the mind, deafening. The cane snaps in two; in a frantic whirl, Hyde throws it to the side, resolving to stamping upon the body before him with his own two feet, until the little shoes are slick with blood and he finally slips, crumpling to the ground and landing hard on his side. Immediately, he crawls forward, seizing the top half of the broken cane, and turns around to face the body again, expecting in his panic yet another attempt at assault. 

Everything is still.

The street before him stands empty and silent, and the body remains unmoving, save for the disheveled and bloodstained collar of the old man’s cloak, turned up and ruffled softly by a gust of wind. 

Jekyll is still wailing in the mind, over and over. 

_ Oh, God - oh, God - oh, God - _

Slowly, in a haze, Hyde creeps towards the body on all fours. Now that the blur of the onslaught is over, he sees the old man's head split open, brains scattered across the cobblestone street. Shuddering, he looks away, feeling Jekyll's nausea welling in his throat as he staggers to his feet. For a moment, Hyde merely stands there, clutching the top half of the broken cane, the handle dripping in the aftermath. The wind whips sweaty hair back from his face, and he tastes the metallic bitterness of the old man's blood on his tongue, mingling with the salt water of his own tears. His lower lip, stinging from a split caused by his own front teeth when he’d fallen to the ground, trembles. 

_ Oh, God - oh, God - oh, God - _

“Didn’t kill me, did he?” whispers Hyde, into the night, the declaration small and trembling. He puts a hand on his own chest, feeling the rapid double heartbeat beneath. “No. Didn’t kill me." This, then, is triumph. The wide luminous eyes overflow. 

Edward Hyde is wracked with sobs, bent double over himself, unable to control the sudden wave of emotion. Seized with violent tremors, he drags the back of his hand over his eyes, clearing a swath of blood and tissue from his sight and flinging the residual gore into the gutter, before suddenly lunging forward to cry out at the corpse, the little singsong voice high and broken. "HA! I killed you! I killed you, the likes of you won't touch me again, will you, now that I've killed you - rot in hell, I've killed you-" He laughs again, a shattered shrieking sound that quickly dissolves back into gasping sobs.

Then he turns away from the body, snatches up his hat, and runs. 


End file.
